1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the use of gas-cooled nuclear reactors or renewable combustion of metal fuels, aluminum, magnesium, or zirconium, and with Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) power generation and gas dynamic propulsion for terrestrial land, sea, and air use.
2. Background
Closed cycle MHD power utilizes the induced Faraday Law electromagnetic field in the MHD generator to yield non-equilibrium ionization in noble gases, preferably argon or helium, which is seeded with cesium in order to generate electric power. The gases are heated either indirectly with fossil fuels in a pebble bed heat exchangers wherein all molecular gases are evacuated prior to heating the noble gases to temperatures of about 2000° K (3140° F.). (Details in Zauderer-US 2012/0137877, which provides an over view of closed cycle MHD.)
Alternatively, a gas-cooled, pebble bed, nuclear reactor, similar to the nuclear rocket tested in the Mars Space Program in the 1960s, with hydrogen propulsion which achieved 5000° R. (2777° K), can be used. Also, experience from commercial gas cooled nuclear reactors with helium cooling, developed in the US and Germany at 1500° F. may be applied to 3000° F.
Between the early 1960 through the early 1970s Zauderer developed and tested shock tube and shock tunnels up to 10 MWt and achieved 20% enthalpy extraction at gas temperatures as low as 2000° K, the minimum at which an MHD power cycle can operate. The next step in 1973 was a one-minute 50 MW (thermal) MHD blowdown test to produce 15 MW of power, equal to 30% enthalpy extraction. The test cost was several million dollars. It was blocked by combustion MHD promoters that seized the entire $50 million US-DOE annual, $400 million over 7 years funding. However, researchers at Eindhoven U, Netherlands, tested in 1 minute blowdown, 2000° K, cesium seeded argon facility, a 5 MWt linear MHD generator that was designed and fabricated by GE's MHD group. It achieved the predicted 6% non-equilibrium power, proving the closed cycle MHD works. However, Eindhoven failed to credit GE. Zauderer recently discovered this information in his library. (See more information below.)
He also discovered in Public Law 404 in the 93rd Congress, where MHD was allocated $50 million annually from 1974 to 1982, that there was no Congressional directive that 99.9% of the funds be used solely for coal-fired direct open cycle MHD combustion. To justify this outrageous self-dealing they concocted in Energy Coal Alternative Study (ECAS) ordered by ERDA/DOE to justify killing coal fired, closed cycle MHD by setting up conditions that would cast non-equilibrium, as discussed in US 2012/0137877. Also, the history of two decades in the 1960s and 1979s of this inventor's research in closed cycle MHD is summarized in the Provisional Application, 61/323,601. Only the aspects that directly led to the present Non-Provisional Application are cited herein.
By coincidence, this published application '0137877 has just been granted a patent. Had CC-MHD continued in the 1970. it is possible that zero CO2 emission with Closed Cycle could have been invented much earlier.
Another coincidence occurred on Jun. 28, 2012 when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a Report that stated post combustion CO2 separation from coal combustion exhaust followed by sequestration is uneconomical because it will cost 75% more than a regular coal plant, which is caused by a loss of 26% in coal power plant efficiency due to chemical CO2 separation. In huge contrast, '0137877 by Zauderer discloses a parallel power plant with an existing Rankine steam cycle fired by devolatilized coal in parallel with an equal power closed cycle MHD Brayton cycle that doubles the power in the existing coal plants, separates CO2 with only 4% plant efficiency loss, and triples the original plants revenue from double the electricity and the sale of cementitious slag from coal ash fired in a slagging combustor. Incredibly, closed cycle MHD that was buried by the coal open cycle coal MHD advocates in the 1970s has arisen like a Phoenix to provide all these benefits in power plants from 100 MW to 1000 MW.
Also, on Feb. 11, 1980, the US General Accounting Office issued a Report: “Direct Open Cycle Coal Combustion MHD: A promising technology for efficiently generating electricity from coal”. It revealed that the MHD program was only in Phase 1 in the previous 6 years with almost all the funds committed to construction and operations of one large test facility called CDIF in Butte, Mont., and another smaller one in Tullahoma, Tenn. The next Phase 2 was to be a 500 MW (thermal?) MHD test plant, also in Butte, Mont. at a cost of $327 million, to be followed by a 1000 MW (electric) coal fired, open cycle MHD demonstration plant, presumably in Montana at a cost of one billion dollars ($3.5 billion in 2010). GAO estimated this would require 20-years of development. These huge sums and long time period to expend, presumably explains why the new Reagan Administration decided to terminate the MHD Program in 1981.
The only reference to closed cycle MHD in this Report and another recently uncovered 1981 Report by Zauderer on the Web was a few lines. This other shorter Report from the Congressional Research Service, Oct. 7, 1981, reached the same conclusions. It stated that DOE's support for Closed Cycle MHD was $1 million! Nowhere in these Reports was there any mention that due to the 10 times higher electric conductivity that resulted from non-equilibrium ionization in cesium seeded argon, an expenditure of under $10 million would have demonstrated a technically and economically viable closed cycle MHD power plant rated at about 10 MW electric (50 MW thermal). Another report recently uncovered that was issued by GAO in 1976. It was initiated at the request of the Congresswoman of the 3rd District Tennessee and it reiterated that the only Congressional mandate for the Open Cycle CDIF was that it had to be in Montana, not that any other version of MHD was forbidden. Furthermore, the Congressional Report document in support of PL 93-404 specifically stated that about 40% of the total funds were to support MHD at other locations without limitation to Open Cycle MHD.
This bias against closed cycle in the MHD Community continued after all MHD was shut down in the early 1980s, as evidenced in an MHD Power book by R. Rosa in 1987, which mentioned the Netherlands non-equilibrium MHD results but no GE results. More details are given below.
The reason for citing this “ancient” history is that it may explain why DOE rejected Zauderer's 2009 proposal for a zero CO2 emission 20 MW coal fired power plant without even reading it because “coal ash does not burn” while the proposal states “burn carbon in coal ash”. As noted above, the Jun. 28, 2012 CBO Report concluded CO2 removal from coal is uneconomical. Zauderer's inquiry as to the reason his economical zero CO2 emission 20 MW coal plant was not cited in the Report, CBO's response was “it was not peer reviewed”. Now the beneficiaries of this coal report are wind, solar, and natural gas power. Therefore, it is not only in their interest for DOE not to fund the 20 MW CO2 proposal, but also not to “peer review” it.
A 40 to 100+ Knot Navy.
Another consequence of DOE terminating Closed Cycle MHD in the mid-1970s was its adverse impact on the plan originally advanced by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Chief of Naval Operations 1970-1974, to construct a 100 Knot Navy that included large ships. The Navy has pursued this goal of faster ships to this day, as have commercial shippers. Speeds above the 50-knot range in Surface Effect Vessels (SEV) and Air Cushion Vehicles (ACV) have been commercialized. Also, the Navy tested prototype high-speed ships. Almost all of them have been in the 100s-ton range, or below, and with few at speeds over 50 knots range. Some were up to the 1000-ton range, but none at 10,000 tons, or above. All this information is documented in US Navy reports on these designs and tests.
The Navy's interest in high-speed ships came to this Inventor's attention only recently during evaluation of high-speed ship propulsion literature on the Internet. Since his group's work on closed cycle MHD in the decades of the 1960 and 1970 was supported by the Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR), had he known of the Navy's interest it is possible that he would have brought the potential of closed cycle MHD to their attention. However, no one thought of this application because in a recent review of all the MHD technical progress reports that Dr. Zauderer's MHD Group submitted to the ONR contained a list of well over a dozen Navy Command Center recipients, but we were not contacted, as evidenced that we did not know of Admiral Zumwalt's 100 knot Navy. However, there was considerable research in MHD propulsion using seawater as the working fluid. There are other more serious problems with using seawater, as is described in the literature, but it is irrelevant for the present invention. As for no information on the 100-knot Navy, there was no Internet in the 1970s.
The present evaluation of high-speed ship development revealed that the Navy's high-speed ship development effort was nearly totally focused on ship designs, which consigned the standard, classic mono hull design near the bottom of this list. Instead the focus has been on multi-hull ships, such as the catamaran, trimaran, etc. Also, surface effect ships, (SES), where the ship is lifted by air jets to skim the sea surface, or SES ships whose hull rests on pontoons in the water, are susceptible to lateral stability problems, (one test ship flipped during trials on a lake). This is similar to what occurs in ferries, which have flat bottoms, and some of them have SES propulsion. From time to time there are reports that an overloaded ferry capsized and sank rapidly with great loss of life. Details are not given but if the load of people or goods crowd one end or a wave lifts one end, the ferry will flip. Also, long slender single hull ships, similar in concept as the mid-19th Century clipper sailing ships had lateral stability issues and suffered from high hull stresses that cracked some clipper ships in half, which limited the increased speed attainable. Therefore, while the Navy sponsored studies reported highest speed in SES, SEV and ACV ships, the risks of sending large 10,000s tons ships with these designs on long ocean voyages are problematic. However, since considerable analyses of these ship design up to 50,000 tons have been done, they were used in this Invention as a comparison standard.
The current favored design is the high-speed littoral combat ships with top speed of 50 knots, with thousands of tons in displacements. It appears that these ships are mono hull in design. They are powered by 2 gas turbines rated at about 30 MW that require very expensive reducing gears to drive the pumps that accelerate the water jets needed to propel the ship. Propellers are limited in high-speed use due to cavitations, (air pockets), that sets in at high propeller tip speeds.
Each of these energy transfers reduces the transfer efficiency from the power source to the propulsion device, which reduces efficiency and sharply increases the cost of increasing speed. The present invention discloses means whereby these intermediate power transfers are eliminated. In fact the present disclosed solutions brings ship power back to its ancient origin, namely transfer of power from sails or oars to speed with no intermediate steps.
An overall examination of the literature of the past several decades on high-speed ship development, especially the proposed designs for larger ships in the 10,000 ton and up displacement range, clearly reveals that the primary barrier to higher speed is the power source. The gas turbine has been assigned this role. However, its power is limited, as is clearly stated in Navy studies, and as explained in the introductory paragraphs to this invention. In a very in depth study by experts in 2004, the state of the art limit in marine gas turbines was listed at 40 MW, such as the GE-LM6000, whose specific fuel consumption is 200 kg/MWH, with fuel oil, which results in an efficiency of 41% LHV. (Gas turbine manufacturers use the lower heating value (LHV) while coal power uses the HHV. The reason is the former fuel has more hydrogen, which escapes unused as water vapor out the stack, and by using LHV this loss is ignored and makes the gas turbine more efficient than it really is if measured by HHV.)
Now the 2004 study projected that in the (undefined) future an LM9000 gas turbine rated at 125 MW, with an SCF of 180 kg/MWH would be available, and possibly in the far term future, the same gas turbine at 90 MW with an SCF 170 kg/MWH. However, from GE's current advertisements it appears that the LM6000 and two current littoral ship awards by the Navy, this turbine is still the limit of marine gas turbine technology. Furthermore, it runs on oil which is scheduled for replacement in the 5 decade long government quest for “energy independence”. However, as per a recent Navy study, (see FIG. 5 herein) increasing the speed of the mothballed SS United States with its 50,000 ton deadweight from its peak power of 240,000 hp at launch in 1952 yielding 39.5 knots, to 45 knots, a speed increase of only 14%, would require 900,000 hp (670 MWe), namely, a 375% power increase, which is not even on the marine turbine horizon for a single gas turbine. However, a Navy sponsored study in 1998 on high speed sealift concluded that 8 GE-90 turbines (presumably the GE-LM9000) firing in parallel would each deliver 178,834 hp (133 MW) for a total of 1,430,670 hp (1067 MW) per ship.